Thursday, December 31, 2009

The opportunity this year is bigger than ever: to lead change, to create a movement in a direction you want to go.

Talking about New Year, I started wondering about my resolutions

When I was little I made the same resolutions every year: give up biting my nails and stop being shy. I still bite my nails and am shy, although not so cripplingly, so they weren't the most successful of resolutions.

What shall I resolve this year I pondered as I wandered. (Do you like that? Poetic?)

My first thought was that I shall resolve to get rid of my ego, since apparently according to people I have one. *ahem*

No, I shall only make resolutions I can type without laughing. So I'll resolve to become a best-selling ... no good, I can't get as far as author without giggling.

What about 'I'll be a nicer and less selfish person'? Well, I got to the end but that's a bit worthy. I know 'I'll be nice to people at school'. But they won't be nice to me and I'm not going to be nice to them if they're not nice to me so that's not a good one. Looks like I'm left with 'I'll stop spending so much time online' No, wait, a resolution should at least be achievable ...

Guess I'll just have to resolve to continue to be as gorgeous and talented and wonderful as I already am. That'll be easy then.

On that note, in the words of Benjamin Franklin "Be at war with your vices; at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man."

There have been occasions though when whole teams have decided that scoring an own goal is the best way for them to progress in a cup competition. The first instance of this was in the Shell Caribbean Cup match between Barbados and Grenada in 1994. In the last group game before the final stages Barbados needed to beat Grenada by two clear goals to qualify otherwise Grenada went through in their place. Sadly, the organizers of the tournament had come up with a weird rule - in extra time a golden goal would count as two goals. So…

Barbados went 2-0 up fairly quickly and looked to be heading through to the next phase. But then Grenada made it 2-1 with seven minutes remaining and the Barbados team needed to score a goal, in either net! They decided to attack their own goal and with the Grenadans not catching on what was happening, Barbados scored an own goal to make it 2-2 and the game appeared to be heading for extra time.

So Grenada needed to score a goal at either end to go through. Desperate defending of both penalty areas by Barbados meant that after 90 minutes the score was 2-2.

In extra time, Barbados decided to attack the Grenadan net rather than their own. With Grenada not used to this, Barbados scored the golden goal four minutes into extra time to win the match 3-2 (or 4-2 according to the rules of the tournament). Barbados qualified.

Link to a footage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThpYsN-4p7w

STORY TWO

A similar incident occurred in a 1998 Tiger Cup game between Thailand and Indonesia. Both teams had already qualified for the semi-finals, but whichever team won would have to face the favourites Vietnam. So both teams tried to throw the match. At 2-2 with a few minutes left, the Indonesians turned on their own goal, now defended frantically by Thai players. In injury time the Indonesian keeper managed to grab the ball in the penalty area and kicked it into his own goal so that Thailand won 3-2.

In the end neither team benefited. Both Indonesia and Thailand lost their semi-final games - to Singapore and Vietnam. Both teams were fined $40,000 for "violating the spirit of the game." The Indonesian goalkeeper was banned for life.

But you have to leave the best until last.

AND SO, STORY THREE

Stade Olympique de l'Emyrne (SOE), Antananarivo is the football section of a Malagasy sports club based in Antananarivo in Madagascar. The club won the Madagascan league in 2001. So they weren’t a bad side when they played another Malagasy team, AS Adema, on October 31st 2002.

AS Adema kicked off and things were normal for a couple of minutes, until the referee made a decision that caused Stade Olympique de l'Emyrne’s coach Ratsimandresy Ratsarazaka to lose his temper with the referee. He was so incensed that he ordered his team to score own goals in protest, which they did do, 149 times. AS Adema didn’t touch the ball again in the whole game as Stade Olympique L'Emyrne, took complete control of the national league game, and reduced AS Adema’s players to the role of bemused onlookers.

Madagascar's soccer authorities banned Stade Olympique de L'Emyrne's coach and four, just four, of the team's players. The SOE coach Zaka Be, accused of orchestrating the debacle from the stands, was suspended for three years and banned from visiting stadiums for the same period. SOE goalkeeper Mamisoa Razafindrakoto, the captain of the Madagascan national side, SOE captain Manitranirina Andrianiaina, and players Nicolas Rakotoarimanana and Dominique Rakotonandrasana were suspended until the end of the 2002 season and banned from stadiums for the same period. All the other players, from both SOE and from AS Adema, received a warning and a threat of more serious action should they commit further offences. Quite what the AS Adema players were supposed to do wasn’t mentioned. The referee was not punished.

The final score of 149-0 to AS Adema is a world-record, more than quadrupling the previous record of 36-0 set in 1885, but it is in disrepute whether to consider this scoreline as a record or not. However, it is also possible that the referee lost count at some point, so the real number of own goals might have been over 150.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

MUN = Model United Nations, which I was very lucky to be a part of this year. It's been held by this school in the city, and it's pretty fun for the most part, or so i've been told. It's my first time ever participating, and let me tell you, IT IS TIRING! So the main conference is in January, but we've recieved our agendas and we're supposed to do tons of research on it. Staring at the screen for 10 hours everyday, reading tons of long, usually boring articles is not the way I planned for my winter vacation to go, but I guess, it's fun as well. And the main conference is going to be mind blowing xD

You represent different countries, and therefore I'm representing Spain. MUN-ing has totally made me high, and I keep referring to myself as the DELEGATE OF SPAIN, rather than my name ;) and since the conference asks us NOT to use personal pronouns, I've started doing that to get into the habit xD

Pre-MUN makes you tired I tell you, and when you have this sucky laptop which keeps freezing all the time, it's more tiring. Plus I really can't concentrate on one thing all the time, so I have a couple of chat windows open, and my friends keep bugging me, one of whom blocks me when i take a little time to IM back :P

Pre-MUN is fun though. It's kind of fun reading up on different countries, and socialising with people, making plans to be allies during the conferences and making plans to bring pillows during the conference to sleep :P

Pre-MUN makes you really high because you get all high due to the fact you're going to be receiving free food, and then you talk to all these people online, and make all these plans to meet up at the conference by screaming each other's country names xD

The best part about Pre-MUN is the anticipation of the main conference :D

Therefore, no matter how tiring pre-MUN is, the anticipation makes it all better, and therefore the delegate of Spain CANNOT wait for the main conference, and hopefully it's gonna be amazing :)

Saturday, December 5, 2009

I find this sad.I mean sure some people may laugh at this story, but if I were in a relationship, I would make sure that I paid more attention to my significant other than to have my eyes superglued to the screen.

Most guys who play seven hours of video games per day don't even know what a real woman looks like, let alone dates one as gorgeous as Kim Sears.

I'm also fascinated by the fact Murray plays tennis video games. You'd think the last thing he'd want to do after a day of training is sit down and play pretend tennis. But, hey, with Federer still truckin', that might be the only way Andy Murray is going to win a major.

An unnamed source told the newspaper “He [Andy] would spend all his time glued to it [PS3]. It drove her mad. In the end she [Kim] just got fed up with it. She wanted more out of the relationship“

Murray has had some notable “problems” in the past with his gaming “addiction” as his former coach once stated that he played on his consoles around 7 hours a day; yeah that sounds about right for a gamer. It would seem that Murray got on the phone to his agent as soon as the news broke because last night his agent stated, “Andy doesn’t play computer games any more than any other 22-year-old“. Hmm, so 7 hours a day it is then! Come on Andy, how could you let that beautiful girl go in favour of your PS3 and Modern Warfare 2?

So men, take a lesson from this!

But on a more positive note, Kim Sears is now single. ;)So yes, all you lads out there, there's no harm in hoping.

Friday, December 4, 2009

It's 3.26 am. I have to get up at 8 am. I wonder why I'm still up. Jeez. I really need to change my sleeping pattern. I got bored. So i decided to blog. The i realised, I have nothing to blog about. Which isn't very surprising, mind you. Life's so monotonous. Study, Exams, and other random shit which happens.

Exams. Meh. I'm not doing great, but I guess I'll pass. Maths was horrible. I can't wait for the 11th of December. That's when they get over. Wheyy!

And my brother's coming from the States on the 17th so that's gotta be fun. I asked him for a lot of stuff. Haha. I like stuff :P

And football. Haha. Football life is going.. well not so perfect. But I can't complain. My team in the Barclay's Premier League, Arsenal, is on number 4, which ain't too bad. And the world cup draw was today. Germany got a really easy group - Germany, Australia, Serbia and this other country i forgot - so they'll go through just fine. Hopefully. *fingers crossed*

Besides that. There's other shit as well. Friends, Backstabbers, Liars, etc. Everything feels like a blur sometimes. But music gets me through. It's the only thing that keeps me sane.

Quote Of The Week.

people who stalk me ^_^

About Me

Sometimes I take a carton of eggs out of the fridge, and look at it and think that maybe one day I'll crack an egg and a little baby chicken will fall out, and then I'll wash him off and raise him indoors...and then...maybe, just maybe I'll have a friend.